Note 58 — Chapter XVIII · ANI, AND THE ARMENIAN KINGDOM OF THE MIDDLE AGES

From these momentous issues, with which the fortunes of Ani were so closely connected, it is an abrupt descent to the plane of her subsequent history. I have already had occasion to mention the two chief actors in this minor drama, the Bagratid dynasty of Georgia and the Kurdish dynasty of Karabagh.58 The Georgian Bagratids weathered the storm of the Seljuk invasions; and they attained during the course of the twelfth and the commencement of the thirteenth century a wide dominion over the adjacent lands. A lesser station must be assigned to the Mussulman family of the Beni-Cheddad, who in the decline of the caliphate had established themselves in the valleys of the Kur and the Araxes, and whose kinsmen probably wandered over the mountains of Karabagh, which at the present day still harbour Kurdish tribes. The particular clan to which they belonged is said to have been named Rewadi; but they became possessed of the important town of Gandzak in the valley of the Kur (the modern Elizabetpol), and of Dvin, the ancient Armenian metropolis, in that of the Araxes. I have twice spoken of their prince, a figure of some importance during the reigns of John Sembat and Gagik the Second, at first the ally and then the determined adversary of the Empire and the coadjutor of Alp Arslan. Abulsevar—the Chawir of the Arabs, the Aplesphares of the Greeks—is well known to the Byzantine annalists, and is styled by them, no less than by the Armenian writers, the prince of Dvin.59 His son and successor, Fathlun, purchased Ani from the Seljuk sultan, and gave it over to his brother Manuchar (A.D. 1072). This ruler appears to have governed with moderation; and he was confirmed in his dignity by the successor of Alp Arslan, the humane Malek Shah, who extended the Seljuk empire to the Mediterranean. After the death of Manuchar in A.D. 111060 the inhabitants were much harassed by their Mussulman and Georgian neighbours during the government of his son and successor, another Abulsevar. They appealed for help to the Bagratid king of Georgia, David the Second, and opened their gates to that monarch (A.D. 1124). Abulsevar and his sons were carried off to Tiflis, and the unhappy prince, with two of his children, perished in an unhealthy prison.61 This revolution restored the city to a Christian administration, after a Mussulman occupation of sixty years. The cathedral, which had served as a mosque, was restored to Christian worship and consecrated anew with great pomp. But David the Second died in the following year; and his son and successor Dimitri was confronted with an investiture of Ani by Fathlun, the eldest son of the deceased ruler, who had been absent at the time of the Georgian conquest and who was thirsting to avenge his father. The issue of a lengthy siege was a happy compromise, by which the Kurdish emir assumed the government under a pledge to reserve the cathedral to the exclusive use of his Armenian subjects (A.D. 1125–26).62 Fathlun was killed in battle in the year 1132, and was succeeded by his brother Mahmud.63 The Kurdish dynasty continued to drag on a precarious existence as lords of Ani until towards the close of the twelfth century; but they lost Gandzak to the Seljuks in 1088, and Dvin to the Georgians in 1162.64 The conqueror of Dvin, George the Third, was twice the conqueror of Ani. His first expedition belongs to the year 1161, when he made himself master of the place after a single day’s siege.65 But his success exasperated his Mussulman neighbours, and he was confronted in the same year by the emir of Akhlat at the head of an army numbering 80,000 men. The pompous title of this prince, that of Shah of Armenia, serves to accentuate his signal defeat by the Georgian king. But the Mussulmans renewed their attacks under the guidance or at the prompting of Ildigiz, the Atabeg governor of Azerbaijan. About the year 1165 George was constrained to restore Ani to them, and it again came into the possession of the Beni-Cheddad. From these it passed for the third time into the hands of the Georgians in 1173–74.66 During the reign of Thamar the luckless inhabitants were surprised and massacred by the emir of Ardabil in eastern Azerbaijan. Even at that period, the commencement of the thirteenth century, the city was still rich and populous.67 But the advent of the Tartars in A.D. 1239 was the occasion of a new catastrophe, the place being sacked by the savage bands of Jenghiz Khan. In 1319 Ani was visited by a severe earthquake, to which Armenian writers ascribe her final abandonment. But there exists evidence to show that this consummation was deferred to a later and uncertain date.